GONE то GROUND. ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY E. CORBET. FROM AN OLD M. F. H. Well, Mr. Editor, I must say you've made a good and decided hit today, at any rate: a really good fox-picture, full of nature, aided by good drawing. The artist must be a sportsman not merely in theory, but in practice, or he never could have given poor old Mister Reynard such a truthful and desolate-looking appearance in his last shifts-brush down and dagged, belly up to his back, and all over as good as a dead-'un. What a shame for the gallant pack to be defrauded of their well-earned blood! and I almost fancy I can hear the "Beat again, by Jove!" of the noble Earl of M, as he crashes through the underwood, in the midst of his hounds, up to the well-known old earth at C--- Wood. "Why, Hazle, you rascal! this is the second time my hounds have been cheated of their fox during the last fortnight by nothing else but your confounded idleness in not stopping these earths properly, as I have so often told you." “Beg yer pardon, my lord," answers the half-sober but obsequious earth-stopper, hat in hand; "but it's all these here badgers as draws out the kids as fast as ever I puts 'em in. We're eat to death with badgers, my lord." "Not a bit of it. Badgers don't work in the daytime; and if they draw the earths at night, after you have pretended to stop them, it's your business to see them properly stopped again before the hounds throw off, instead of idling your time away at the Poacher's Rest,' as you are always doing. Don't let it happen again, or you shall go for good." "It were a thousand pities, my lord," says Jack, the head-whip, "for we must ha' killed 'un this time. I viewed 'un only five minutes ago, a-dying afore 'em all the way over Smockington Meadows. They did desarve 'un, surely." "I beg your pardon, my lord," observes an old sportsman, who had arrived at the earth at the same moment as the rest of the advancedguard; "but this fox is so dead beat and hot, that if you will only take the hounds away for ten minutes down wind to a little distance, the fox will be sure to leave the earth, and then you will be able to kill him. The hounds really deserve him, after such a brilliant fifty-seven minutes." "Ah! let him be," says the master; "he is a real good old stout fox after all, and I hope there will be some prospect of two or three litters of cubs by him before we meet again with him next month, when I hope to have better luck. Put 'em away from the earth, Jack; and let's go home," says his lordship, the caloric of whose much-tried temper in the field is wont to subside even more quickly than it rises, and whose gentlemanly bearing and thorough sportsmanship stamp him about the best amateur huntsman of the day. "Who is that old fellow in a black coat, that was talking to Lord H M▬▬ at the earth?" inquires young Crashington, who had so pumped out his weedy half-bred nag long before the finish, and was consoling himself upon so sudden a stop being put to the day's proceedings. "Why, don't you know him?" respond half-a-dozen voices at once; "its old Mister, pr'aps one of the best sportsmen in England. He says he only comes out now and then, to look at 'em, and see how the young-'uns take to it across country, but not to ride himself. Why, he was in the first flight all the way, sailing along as fresh as a fouryear-old. How well he handled his horse over those double posts and rails in Shangton Fields, and how stout and well his nag carried him all through the run! I understand it's a young Irish horse belonging to Jack Darby, which Muffington of the Lancers pretended he could not ride, as he pulled his arms nearly off. I thought him perfection, and as quiet as any lady's horse could be. Come on, let's go and get a rise out of the old boy." "Will you take a go-down of sherry out of my canteen, Mr. and a sandwich, after this brilliant run?” "No thank you, I'm rather old-fashioned, and I never eat nor drink between breakfast and dinner. I cannot imagine where you young-'uns put away all that sherry and stuff you're sipping all day. Besides, it spoils your feeding at dinner-time, and I'm going to dine with Sir John when I hope to meet some of you once more this evening." "Pray, Mr., do you think that fox ought to have been killed?" inquired young Squire Oakley. "He has given us two regular clippers already, and we have every prospect of another with him, when we have the luck to find him." 66 Gently, young gentleman; don't be too fast. Because he ran well to-day, and pr'aps did once before, it is no reason he should again. A fox, after such a dressing as he got to-day, is not unlikely to die, or at any rate become surfeited and mangy. I could give you a hundred instances of foxes either dying in the small spout or drain before they were dug out, from nothing else but exhaustion, and where no terrier was used. I have also known many foxes, which were left late at night in a wet drain or damp earth, get so surfeited, that, when we found them three weeks or a month after, they had lost half their jackets through surfeit. You may laugh and stare at what I am telling you as much as you like, but I assure you it is perfectly true. I remember once finding an afternoon fox in a spinny in Warwickshire, which, after a capital hour and twenty minutes, partly in the open, and then all through those big woods, went to ground in a wet drain; and as it was too late and dark to wait for him, we left him. Three weeks after, we went to draw for the same fox; but he jumped up in a ploughed field adjoining the cover, which he found, I have no doubt, much cooler than having his kennel in the warm brushwood. We knew him directly, for he was a very long dark-coloured fox; but, quantum mutatus ab illo,' he had lost nearly all his coat on the near side, from a surfeit caught in the damp drain. He ran the same line to a yard, and at the end of one hour and a few minutes the hounds killed him, running as straight for the old drain as he could do. He was so scurfy and unund that he was not given to the hounds to break up. My idea is t every fox which is found ought to be fairly killed, either above ground or under, with fair bolting or digging; except by digging a main earth or breeding-place, or where too much time is wasted in getting him out. I was always an advocate for all the fair blood you can get; and my old friend Mr. Musters often declared to me that he was sure that one hunted fox dug to hounds while waiting and baying on the earth did them more good than half-a-dozen kills in the open. But, as I told you before, I am old-fashioned in many of my ideas, and I dare say that the present race of sportsmen know a deal more than the old 'uns; and so they ought, for they have their own brains as well as the experience of the last generation to work upon. All the same: they don't have half the good runs they used to have." "What art thou, Frost? and whence are thy keen stores Whom even th' illusive fluid cannot fly! Is not thy potent energy, unseen, Myriads of little salts, or hook'd, or shap'd Like double-wedges, and diffus'd immense Through water, earth, and ether? Hence at eve, With the fierce rage of Winter deep suffus'd, THOMSON. From unforeseen circumstances our "Summer Ramble" of 1866 has become a winter's sojourn at the quiet village of Abington, where the New Year of 1867 now presents itself in its becoming habit of unsullied white, while the frosted window-panes refuse to yield to the influence of a blazing fire. Meanwhile the Scottish game of curling termed "the roaring game," is vigorously practised within a few hundred yards of where we are writing, small birds generally having gathered into flocks, while a few days since a robin took the occupancy of the arm-chair during our temporary absence from the room, reminding us of the lines of the poet quoted above: |